https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/06/business/media/anthony-weiner-nyc-mayor-race.html

THE MEDIA EQUATION

Anthony Weiner’s Not Coming Back. But He Has Nowhere to Go.

By Ben Smith June 6, 2021, 8:40 p.m. ET

Anthony Weiner doesn’t pay the kind of attention to New York politics that he did back when he was running for mayor, twice, before the exchange of messages with a 15-year-old that sent him to federal prison.

He was good on the campaign trail, though. He was the one Mike Bloomberg worried about and spent millions trying to deny the nomination in 2009. Mr. Weiner was a kind of test subject, too, for the sort of media and social media storms that destroyed his 2013 mayoral campaign, and are now just how politics is.

So I was curious what he thought of the current campaign, which is entering its final weeks. It is, as always, a brutally revealing moment for the candidates, for the media, for the psyche of the city. I persuaded Mr. Weiner to watch last Wednesday’s debate after his twice-weekly hockey game. By the time we met last Thursday at the Barnes & Noble on Union Square, he had the energy of a star on the bench who knows what he’d do if he were back out there.

First, he said that if he were onstage, he’d break with the escalating sense of panic about New York’s future that has consumed the campaign.

“All right, let’s dial down the apocalypse. Let’s relax, everybody,” he’d say. “It’s going to be all right if we make some smart decisions.”

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https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/06/business/media/anthony-weiner-nyc-mayor-race.html